[A/N: be warned, this is my longest chapter yet.]
J gazed upon the sleeping form of her master and couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy in her core. She hated how much affection he had for the Primarchs, who are unreliable, unprofessional, and unpredictable in her eyes.
To her, only the Legio-Custodes were worthy of serving the King of all Ages. But, she understands that they are simply not numerous enough to conquer an entire galaxy. Ten thousand warriors is a really small number in the grand scale of things.
She sighed and shook her head, clearing her thoughts. She searched deep into her SSD to find her earliest memory, back when she was first activated.
She walked behind the boy she now calls master, she had yet to receive a name. She was led into a small room with various machine parts and tools scattered around.
"Please, have a seat, I'll be with you shortly." The boy said.
She walked to the only small chair in the room as the boy sat down on the large wooden tool chest he was carrying, it had various drawers and unfolded to reveal more storage. The boy came over and began adjusting her chair and reached up to take off her workers helmet. Which made her feel more bare than she already was. Looking into the mirror in front of her she saw him look as well, and he had a look of realization.
Walking back to his tool chest he looked through the various drawers and she could see the things in each one, spare visors for drones, chess pieces, and finally what he was looking for. A pair of glasses, a rather standard pair of glasses that had two attachments: on the right side, a mounted flashlight, and on the left some magnifying glasses that all lay stacked on top of one another and could be folded back and to the side if need be.
Walking back to her he began by doing some general maintenance, after inspecting her visor he determined it was better to just replace it rather than just wash. Finding screw ports hidden at the edges of the visor he unscrewed and took off the visor revealing the drone's real eyes. A pair of optics opened and closed trying to regain focus, she raised a hand to touch her face.
"No te toques los ojos." That was Spanish for her to not touch her face if she did, she could accidentally break or unplug something that could damage her vision. Returning to her he had gotten a new visor proven by the fact it still had the protective plastic layer on the front.
With a satisfying click the visor screen locked into place. And with a satisfying peel of the protective plastic he looked into her eyes and gave her a smile, what followed was a quick tune-up on her whole body, head to toe.
The boy then spent an hour meticulously crafting her outfit, making her wig, and leather working her shoes. After all was said and done, the boy grabbed a large stamp with the Supremo Family logo and pressed it into the arch of J's right foot and then again into the base of her neck. Marking her as his property and to be completely honest J didn't really mind that.
This was a human she'd proudly serve.
The lad stepped back and admired his handy work before grabbing a hand mirror and offering it to the unnamed drone.
"So? Whatcha' think good or no good?"
The drone was speechless, she was so beautiful, the closest thing she'll ever feel to being one of them, a human.
"I-I... Thank you, boss."
"No problem, Jupiter."
(A/N props to Violent Violet for such a good J drawing)
With the memory ending she looked at the sleeping form of Dallas and noticed the look of pain on his face. She walked over and began to shake him.
"Sir?"
No response.
"Sir!"
No response.
"Dallas!"
With that yell Dallas lunged outta bed summoning his blade clearly frightened. She took a few steps back to give him some space. He glanced around the room looking for any threat, but found none. He took a few deep breaths and relaxed, muttering an apology to J for the scare.
Looking at the clock sitting next to his bed on a bedside drawer. "Damn, six pm already?"
J looked confused, had time passed so quickly? But she was thrown off her thought process when the sirens began to ring.
"Tornado?" She asked.
"No," Dallas answered, his face becoming firm as he walked to the window and peered outside glancing at the clear blue skies. "It's September, tornado season isn't until spring next year. This siren is for something else, something darker, They're here."
Dallas looked back to J. "Quickly rally the Custodians, I want every unit on the A113 defensive plan, you know what to do."
J saluted and sped off, radioing N and V to prepare themselves. Meanwhile Dallas walked over to his desk and pushed a button that caused a microphone to spring out.
zzzrt
'ALL PRIMARCHS REPORT TO THE WORKSHOP IMMEDIATELY.'
zzzrt
Dallas sped to the workshop and began to put on his wargear as fast as possible, it was an experimental model but the new Auramite Gravis Plate should prove superior to his old Netherite Plate.
Soon enough Ruby, who was the fastest, burst in followed by Yang, then Blake and Weiss.
"Dal' big man speak to me. What's going on." Asked Yang.
"Why are the sirens going off?" Asked Ruby.
"We saw the Custodians being mobilized, are we under attack?" Asked Blake.
"As you can see, yes we're going to be under attack, the archenemy is upon us, your weapons and armor are ready, I assume you can equip yourselves? Good, I need to speak to the Custodians."
Dallas didn't wait for an answer and stormed out the workshop heading towards the front entrance where thankfully J, N, and V were already in their war-gear wearing the Aquilon Tactical Dreadnought armor. Scurrying around was the rest of the custodians which comprised two main forces the XL Worker Drones, and the standard Worker Drones who made up the main force.
In total there were around 10,000 of them, most of them were just being awoken from the stasis like slumber while others ran around getting the towed artillery up and stocked while others helped the large Telemon and the two Contemptor Dreadnoughts online. The XLs checked their armor and weapons before heading out to their respective defensive positions. About half way between the Mansion and the surrounding trees, the Supreme Mansions location acted as both a blessing and a curse as the dense forest provided a natural camouflage from anyone trying to search for this place from the ground, but a curse as if anyone did find it they can use the forests as a staging ground.
"J! What's the situation?" Asked Dallas.
J saluted him, along with the rest of the nearby Custodians. "Sir we have most units up and operational, the struggle is the supply, we have enough to last us for a while. The difficult part is getting that supply from the basements below to the defense lines." As she spoke the sky began to darken as if a solar eclipse was happening. Dallas did look up into the sky but could see nothing but minor streaks of purple lightning, they were running out of time.
"Well, try the best y'all can to get whatever you need up here, but it looks like the defensive plan is working. Have the defenses spread out evenly?"
"Yes sir, full coverage."
"Good...good..." he said, slightly relieved, some good news at least.
"Dallas!" Someone cried out for him.
He turned to see team RWBY in their full gear, ready for battle.
"Now can you explain to us what's going on?" Whined Weiss.
"The Chaos gods are coming, we will be attacked any moment now prepare yourselves."
"Damn... it really is happening." The Primarchs were caught off guard; they had just gotten to relax only to be thrown into the fire so quickly.
Then the earth began to shake, while earthquakes weren't exactly impossible in Texas they were extremely rare. Then an extremely bright flash happened blinding everyone. The once green grass and dark skies were replaced by a miasma of energy. The area they were in was indescribable, unexplainable.
"Fuck... it's happening." Dallas cursed. "EVERYONE LISTEN UP!" He yelled, gathering everyone's attention.
"The Monstrous enemy clamor for a taste of victory. But we will defy them this day, as we have for millennia. The archenemy of Mankind and the Galaxy are going to stop at nothing to see our destruction. They have taken so much from us, and this ends today! You have trained for this very moment and I have full confidence in your skills. So stick with your dance partners and show these wretches the wrath of ancient vengeance!"
The army of the assembled warriors cheered as Dallas gave a nod to the Primarchs who saluted in return. Dallas turned around, facing his back towards his legion as he grabbed a war-horn from his waist. It was a special mysterious thing that was gifted to him by his future counterpart who ordered him to play it when the time was right.
He took a deep breath... and blew. A long deep growl rang out, that would echo across the multiverse.
Soon enough large portals began to open and warriors from the combined forces of the Imperium of Mankind poured through. The Imperial Guard, the Adeptus Astartes, the Inquisition, the Adepta Soroitas, the Adeptus Mechanicus and more.
The footsteps of hundreds of thousands of soldiers caused the ground to rumble. Armored vehicles began to block out the dirt and aircraft blot out the sky, while Titans stomped on to the field their own war-horns blaring loud and proud.
"Y'all ready?" He asked his generals, his Primarchs. He got a nod in return.
"Kay' let's do this!"
FOR THE EMPEROR!
GLORY TO MANKIND!
In the heart of the Holy See.
In the home-world of humanity.
The seat of power is in danger.
There's a foe of a thousand swords.
They were abandoned by our lord.
Their fall from grace will pave their path to damnation.
Then the 189.
In the service of Terra.
They're protecting the holy line.
It was circa 41st millennia, giving their lives on the steps to the Palace.
HIS will be done!
For the grace, for the might of our Lord. For the home of the holy.
For the throne, for the Emperor's word.
Gave their lives so boldly.
For the grace, for the might of our Lord.
In the name of His glory.
For the throne, for the way of the sword.
Come and tell their story again.
Under guard of 42.
Along at flagship avenue.
The final battle is awaiting.
They're the guards of the Holy See. They're guards of Humanity.
Their path to history is paved with salvation.
Then the 189.
In the service of Terra.
They're protecting the holy line.
It was circa 41st millennia, giving their lives on the steps to the Palace.
HIS will be done!
For the grace, for the might of our Lord. For the home of the holy.
For the throne, for the Emperor's word.
Gave their lives so boldly.
For the grace, for the might of our Lord.
In the name of His glory.
For the throne, for the way of the sword.
Come and tell their story again.
Dying for salvation with dedication.
No capitulation, annihilation.
Father's commendation, reincarnation.
Glory is your destination.
Dying for salvation with dedication.
No capitulation, annihilation.
Father's commendation, reincarnation.
Glory is your destination.
FOR THE EMPEROR
For the grace, for the might of our Lord! For the home of the holy!
For the throne, for the Emperor's word!
Gave their lives so boldly!
For the grace, for the might of our Lord!In the name of His glory!
For the throne, for the way of the sword!
Come and tell their story again!
Dallas stared at the Chaos gods, who began to circle him like a flock of vultures. Before they all began to glow their respective colors.
Red, blue, green, and purple. The colors began to fuse into a single being, and a familiar face appeared from the glowing energies.
Rias Gremory. Wearing the original artificer armor she wore during the final battle on the Vengeful Spirit in the last days of the Gremorian Heresy.
The ultimate form of mockery, to steal the face of his beloved. With a valiant war cry, Dallas lunged at the gods for their insolence. His sword slammed into the shaft of World Breaker, causing the gods to laugh before shoving him back. Dallas glared before lunging once more, earning a giggle from the fake Rias.
In order to fight the Emperor on one hand, they summoned the traitor versions of the Primarchs in order to either A: kill their respective loyalist version or B: keep them busy long enough until they can bring the Star-Child down.
Traitor Weiss snarled as the tip of her loyalist counterpart rapier nicked her armor. Rising up on her feet, she swept down with her rapier in quick succession. Weiss' weapon found them all, turning them aside with economical movements. Nevertheless, she was sorely pressed.
She had fought daemons of every kind on many worlds and bested them all. This version of herself, however, was an unholy blend of Primarch and Daemon. In her, the energy of the warp was married to the wisdom of ancient sciences. She was part material god, part immaterial daemon lord, and her power was great.
Weiss cut and feinted, using the Hand of Dominion to catch the sword wielded by her traitor alternate self. The unholy metal of the blade cut into the thick ceramite of the gauntlet, and corrosive poison spattered the Armor of Fate, eating into it with smoking ferocity.
Pain somehow afflicted Weiss through her armor, as if her war plate itself were hurt. A spicy agony burned up the nerves in her arm from her interface sockets. She gritted her teeth and twisted the gauntlet. Energy crackled and banged, and the rapier snapped in two. Ichor pumped from her hollow innards. Strings of flesh tore free as Weiss cast the broken tip aside. And her counterpart screamed as if her limb had been ripped off, and she recoiled. Weiss fought against her own pain to slash hard with Myrtenaster, cutting deeply into Traitor Weiss' sword-less arm.
"How dare you!" She screamed, rearing back. She lunged at her enemy and crashed bodily into her, knocking Weiss from her feet. Her honor guard thundered down the steps to join their mother, forming a shield wall about her as she scrambled up, but Traitor Weiss charged into them, barging them from their feet and slaughtering them contemptuously, her broken sword lopping limbs off with every strike.
"You will all die!" shouted Weiss, and she surged past her last bodyguard as Traitor Weiss' sword pierced through the Space Marine's shield, armor, and body. She swung hard with her gauntlet, but her counterpart was too quick and weaved to the side; the Hand of Dominion punched down and into the concrete steps, pulverizing three of them. Weiss spun around, anticipating her counterpart's next strike, but the Daemon was gone.
She searched for her counterpart in the conflict. Their two armies had met, and their struggles filled the mansion side to side. Her warriors and the Traitor Legion now named as the Atlesian Tyrants were intermingled, the bright blue and white armor of the Atlesian Guard dotted within a sea of darker blue and black with battle-plates decorated with the stretched skins of the dead. Cones of sound visibly tortured the air, blasting Weiss' warriors from their feet.
Blood fountained from breathing grilles as dying Space Marines coughed up shattered internal organs. A knot of white-helmed Terminators stood back to back, dealing death to any traitor that strayed near, while a wall of Atlesian Guard Second Company brothers advanced, guns booming, pushing back insane warriors.
War was everywhere, desperate and wild. The situation in the void was mirrored within the Mansion. Even with the reinforcement from the war-horn that Dallas blew they were still outnumbered. They are all gonna die here.
First theoretical, Weiss thought. Her counterpart is a prime evil in this world. First Practical, I will kill her.
Second theoretical, she countered, you are angry. Second practical, you will throw your own life and those of your men away for nothing. You have failed in this campaign. Retreat.
A memory of Dallas, back when he first met her, when her father had put her in an arranged marriage with him, flashed in her mind.
"Control yourself, you're making yourself look bad, not me, not your father, yourself." Dallas had told her. "You are mightier in every regard than any man, woman or child, and that includes your passions. Master them, or you will fail."
Temper. There was always her temper. For most of her life, Weiss Schnee had kept her emotions in check, but there had been notable occasions when she had lost her head. At Calth, and when Sotha was attacked. Or when she had arrived late to Terra. Or the early days of the Scouring... she would add this day to that record. Beneath her commanding exterior, Weiss was always seething with fury.
"TRAITOR!" She bellowed. "Face me!"
A whip-fast motion flickered to her side. Traitor Weiss sped through the melee, coming from the left. Weiss barely had time to raise her sword before her counterpart crashed into her, snarling incoherently, knocking her backwards.
"You hurt me, you corpse-master's cock-sucker." The last vestiges of Traitor Weiss humanity melted from her face as it transformed into a mask of pure hatred. "No one hurts me. No one beats me! There can only be one Ruler of Atlas, and that's me!"
She wrapped her hand around her counterpart, constricting her with such force that her armored neck plate began to crack. Casting aside her sword, Traitor Weiss reached down and grasped her counterpart's head.
"You wanted to face me, so face me!" She said, wrenching free Weiss helmet, exposing her naked flesh to the air.
The stink of her corrupted self made Weiss gag. Her head swam as the Daemon Primarch's scent invaded her nose and throat, unmoderated by her battle helm's systems.
"Pathetic!" cried Traitor Weiss. She flinging Weiss aside. Her wounded arm was already healing, crackling warp energies working in tandem with her Primarch physiology to make her whole again. She conjured swords from poisoned mists to fill her empty hand and flew at the Queen of Atlas.
Weiss staggered upright, gasping. Every breath poured more of Traitor Weiss' lethal perfume into her lungs, a poison so potent that it taxed her superhuman body. She parried, and parried again, but she could land no counterstrike and was forced back up the stairs.
A blow flung her arm wide. And she couldn't see the blade coming straight for neck.
SHIING
With a single slice traitor Weiss had completely decapitated her counterpart.
For Weiss the world had completely grinded to a halt she felt as her world flipped upside down, literally. She tried to breathe but couldn't, her head had been severed. She could see the grin on her counterpart's face, she looked away and locked eyes to Dallas who was put into a choke hold and forced to watch Weiss' death.
'I'm dead aren't I? No, I cannot die now, there's still so much to do. Too much, too much. What will Blake do without me, Ruby? Yang? Would they mourn my death? Who will guide them now... '
She looked deep into Dallas' eyes, and could only mentally scream for help.
'Dallas...save me.'
Darkness enveloped her.
And her head finally hit the ground.
Weiss Schnee was no more.
Dallas could only stare in horror as Weiss' head rolled on the ground, before getting picked up by the only remaining Weiss Standing. She raised the head by its braided ponytail as high she could and roared a mighty cry of victory.
"Ich bin der Sieger!"
The Tyrants of Atlas hooted and hollered at their victory and began to mop up all remaining Atlesian Guard forces who by now broke formation in fits of fury in order to strike vengeance for their mother's death.
Wilhelm Schnee, Chapter Master of the Atlesian Guard cried at the sight of his mother's head being held up for all to see. Steeling himself he marched forward and grabbed the chapter standard, which lay crumpled like a rag in the dirt.
"Atlesian Guardians! We hold this ground in the name of our Primarch! Rally to me! Victory or Death!" Shouted Wilhelm as loud as he could trying to reunify his scattered brothers. While planting the standard firmly on the ground.
"Even if we do die, we die with vengeance on our lips!" He commanded.
"VENGEANCE!!!" Cried the rest of the Atlesian Guard.
Dallas meanwhile, exploded in a burst of golden energy, sending the fake Rias flying backwards. They regained their footing as they looked up to see the Star-Child's body begin to glow. His form grew in height and sheer bulk became twice his size.
Becoming the True Master of Mankind, the Lord of Light, the Eternal tyrant, the God-Emperor of Mankind, fully embracing his God-hood. He launched himself at the Chaos gods, giving a heavy full strength straight punch to the Rias face, before grabbing them in a clench, and flying into the air Rias quickly hit with two overhand lefts to the face breaking the clench. But Dallas was able to regain his posture and caught them with a one handed toss to the ground sending them both tumbling to the ground, after recovering with Dallas calling back his sword: who he had lost the grip of sending it flying to the side, with a snap of his fingers.
"No more fucking games! And this time, I am actually just going to kill you, no more holding back."
Dallas dashes forward with an overhead swing, the gods counter this with an underhand swing of World-Breaker. A blow so powerful that Corcea Mors: his soul induced power sword shattered like glass, sending shards everywhere. Dallas cried out in pain as the shockwave from the blow caused the auramite plating of his right arm to crack, sending chunks of armor up and off landing ten feet away.
Rias laughs, a deep disgusting laugh. "I can take it, my question is can you?"
Rias sends another swing at him using his lowered guard to catch him with a mean swing to the head causing fractures and internal bleeding in his cranium.
Dallas staggers back, summoning another weapon, his Thunder-Hammer: having a much simpler name 'Destroyer'. This large war-hammer incorporates an energy field emitter within its head that activates only when the hammer strikes its target. This allows the weapon to store a tremendous amount of energy and release it only at the moment of impact, producing a terrific blast of energy and concussive force like the crack of thunder, from which the name of the weapon originates.
Charging forward Dallas beats away World-Beaker with a parry grabbing fake Rias by her red hair in her armor's cowl and is able to perform a wild looping reverse judo throw that sends Rias flying into the southwest exterior wall of the Mansion. But she recovers with the swiftness of a cat, slips the overhead left, ducks the right hook, slips the straight left hand and reaches up to apply pressure on the God-Emperor's throat and reverses position putting Dallas' back up against the wall.
Rias then begins to absolutely abuse the Master of Mankind. Giving him various levels of punishment, two upper cuts to the abdomen-one of the emperor's weakest points, and metaphorically speaking his Achilles heel, unlike the rest of his body which is fortified by muscle tissue and bone, his abdomen is his storage area. Not made of muscle but rather fat, that could prove useful in long term engagements giving him extra energy and being able to outlast his opponent.
But this is where the Achilles heel comes in, due to its soft nature a hard blow to his abdomen can cause immense pain, similar to getting hit in the testicles for men, or a similar pain to women, like childbirth. To make it simple, a hit to the stomach hurts him, A Lot.
Rias then gives him two jaw shattering right elbows to the face, quick right cross, goes back downstairs for two more belly shots, then follows it with another right cross. She then tried to follow up with a short left hook but Dallas caught it and gave her a beautiful straight left punch to the chest, sending her flying back off of him.
"Step Off! You come into my home!? Attack my family?!"
As Dallas was getting his ass handed to him by an imposter version of his beloved, a voice he hadn't heard in so long echoed in his mind 'Dallas! Control yourself! Your family is falling apart!' It was the voice of his own mother from long ago. Back when he was just a boy, to hear her voice again sent him deeper into a fit of rage, remembering what the gods did to her or rather what they didn't do.
Dallas grabbed Destroyer and prepared to throw it towards her but Rias summoned 'the Binds of the Prince of Pleasure' and wrapped it around the thunder-hammer before Dallas could throw it.
Dallas responds by using the chains as a conduit and sending warp-lightning towards her, lighting her up. The gods power through as their combined power is simply too much and they pull hard. Ripping the hammer straight out of his hands and she rears it back like a fishing cane and launches it back towards Dallas.
Dallas dodges it, and grabs the chains to rear them in for a powerful left hook, but Rias was prepared as she closes in; she dodges the punch and impales her claws deep into Dallas' abdomen.
Dallas, full of pain, explodes in a massive burst of warp energy repelling Rias, who licks Dallas' blood off her claws. As they prepare themselves for round 2.
Meanwhile above the skies where Aircraft and flying Daemons battled. The Sun Dragon and the Daemon of Khorne meet in the air, beneath a sky the color of blood, drawing breaths that taste of murder. The first impact of gauntlet against gauntlet is a metallic thunder crack while their sons wage war below, fighting and dying in the shadows of their mother's wings.
The Queen of the Red Sands throws a right hook and Ember Celica shrieks, its steel thirsted for souls, but the Dragon is gone, twisting away, soaring higher. Yang beats her wings, giving chase, enraged at her own cumbersome strength. It's like fighting a shadow. Each time she closes on her counterpart, the Dragon rolls aside or furls her wings and drops away. Each missed punch, each failed grasp with her claws, resonates inside of Yang's skull with a splash of acid. The Nails bite to give her strength, this is so, but they also bite to punish her. Now more than ever, the Nails bite with the sound of Khorne's urgent command, begging for her counterpart's death.
Yang, or rather what little is left of Yang now that her soul has been transmogrified into the flesh-matter of an ethereal god, has never heard Khorne beg before. The weakness in the god of blood voice makes her shudder with revulsion.
Loyalist Yang dives low, swooping towards the ground, and her counterpart follows. Volkite beams stab up at them both, lancing the sky. They fly through detonations that blacken the Dragon's armor and darken her wings; explosions that do nothing but tighten the Daemon's hold on incarnation. Every death taking place upon this plane, every life ending beneath them, strengthens Yang and seals her wounds.
Closer, she comes. Closer. She can smell the sweat on her counterpart's skin. She can hear the drumbeat of her counterpart's blood. She can smell the sweetness of her wounds.
Loyalist Yang senses it. The Dragon veers away with a grace Yang cannot hope to match; a spread of wings arrests her dive and a flash of straight silver rips across the Daemon's face. There is no pain. Most of her face has been cut from her skull but there is no pain. She experiences pain the way others might feel grief, or trauma, or frustration: to her it is a sense of helplessness, a wound within. It is something that cannot be tolerated, something that can only be overcome with the running of enemy blood. She's blind, her face broken by the blessed gauntlets, and without the organic receptors to process injury, it's the weakness that hurts.
Her eyes regenerate as she thrashes blindly with her punches. She can see again, dull and dim for another few moments, then with a clarity that defeats the ash and the dust swirling in the air. She doesn't see as a human sees. Yang sees the fire of souls, and her counterpart's flares brightest of all. Aside from the dueling gods that is.
When they meet again, it's in a killing embrace. The Queen of the Red Sands tears the Dragon from the sky, clutching her counterpart's in her great claws, bearing Loyalist Yang down. They fall, and fall, and fall, and crash through the glass dome of the Mansion's courtyard, landing in the green garden of the Star-Child.
They strike the grass floor in a roll that would break any mortal bones, their tumbling bodies obliterating the various fruits and vegetables that had been cultivated.
Yang gets a clawed hand around the Dragon's head. She beats loyalist Yang's skull against the floor once, twice, thrice, and cracks web out along the marble pathways of the garden in stone-splitting veins; a fourth time, a fifth–
There is weakness, then. Perhaps it should be pain, as well, but it is most definitely a weakness; Yang's grip slackens, her arm dissolves, literally it dissolves from the shoulder down, and the Queen of the Red Sands is thrown back as the Dragon rises. In Loyalist Yang's hands is a pistol, and the dregs of Yang's sentience recognise this as the melta-weapon infernus: a one-use thing of incineration. The Dragon casts it aside and takes flight, diving right at the Daemon, leading with a strong left hook. Yang raises her own hand to stop it, feeling the flow of the incoming blows like promises whispered in warning, and she catches each of the Dragon's punches before they can impact against her.
Metal grinds. Sparks spray, arcing out from the meeting gauntlets, hypnotic in their falling beauty. For a moment, just a moment, she is on the Plains of Desh'ra'zhen, camping rough beneath the pale moon, watching fireflies play above the banked campfires of her freed-slave army. How peaceful that night had been, even with the Nails knuckling into the back of her brain; how peaceful that one night was before the Emperor tore her away from her real brothers and sisters, the siblings of her heart and not of manufactured blood, leaving them to fight alone, leaving them to die, leaving her to face this unwanted life and–
Loyalist Yang strikes her with a heavy blow. A punch straight at her chest shattering her ribs and cracking her breastplate. The two mirrors are face to face; one of them a visage of bloodied human perfection, the other a construct of absolute inhumanity, rage made manifest.
As close as they are, despite the changes to Yang's vision, she sees the tiredness etched on the Dragon's features. The faint cuts and scratches that the Battle for the Warp has written onto her flesh, indelibly marking her. This war has rendered the perfect imperfect.
"Die" her counterpart tells her, with the gentleness of giving a great gift. "So I can free you from this torment."
Yang's lips peel back in the memory of a smile. She tries to speak. Speaking is difficult, not because she is dying but because she is no longer a creature for whom speaking is a natural or necessary process. Speech is an echo from a lost life, the Queen of the Red Sands expresses herself in slavering roars and the death of her foes.
Loyalist Yang sees this. Sees the way Yang's face twists, trying to remember how to form words. Sees that the Daemon is not dying.
The Queen of the Red Sands moves, but the Dragon is faster. Loyalist Yang leaps upward, taking to the sky. Bleeding and laughing, the Daemon follows.
They swoop between the Mansions tower that rises from the center of the courtyard. They break away into the open sky. Loyalist Yang is slower in the open, but she is built for this; she is graceful and experienced and born for aerial warfare. Yang has the unreal strength of Daemonic muscle, but she is a gargoyle chasing a Dragon. Loyalist Yang weaves and soars and dives out of her clutches, and–
'Kill her.'
Khorne, inside the Daemon's mind. The words are bloated by the Pantheon, ripe with the borrowed power of the gods. Behind those words is the promise of pain, true pain, Nails-pain. The Queen of the Red Sands beats her wings harder, her gauntlets leaving a trailing wake of screaming souls: the dead of the God-Emperor's followers, singing their song.
They race low to the ground, hardly an arm's reach above the heads of their warring sons, fast enough that their armies are an indistinct blur. Yang swings her massive tree trunk arms. She gouges the ground, and sends Sun Dragons and World Eaters tumbling across the ground, their bodies destroyed, their souls spilling into the warp's million waiting maws.
Without warning, Loyalist Yang climbs, soars.
'This is your chance. What you were born and reborn for.'
The Queen of the Red Sands ignores the God of Blood pandering. She senses her counterpart tiring and sees it in the flicker of her soulfire. Her counterpart's spirit ripples with the desperate sweetness of exhaustion. The war... the battlement... the Bane of the Branwen Bloodline... Yes, the Dragon's strength is running dry.
The Daemon gathers speed, flying into the polluted wind, while anti-air fire stitches the air around her. Loyalist Yang weaves aside from the blinding slashes of lascannon beams, rolls away from the juddering passage of a Legion Stormbird. Yang, who is far less maneuverable, crashes into it, goes through it and tastes the flavor of those doomed souls as their craft comes apart around them and plunges towards the battlefield below.
It is nothing to her, the expenditure of a breath's worth of effort. Behind her, the Stormbird falls from the sky, its hull aflame and cleaved in two. The largest piece of its structure will tumble against the side of the Mansion, detonating against the thickest void shields ever created. Wreckage will rain upon the warriors of both sides. Yang knows none of this, will never know it.
'Do not fail me, Xiao-Long.'
The babbling of a frightened creature, speaking as though it were in control. The Queen of the Red Sands pays it no heed.
They dive through the death-cloud of a falling Titan, into black smoke and the white fire of plasma. The billowing smoke cannot hide the light of the Dragon's soul. Yang is close, close enough that she parts her jaws to reveal uneven rows of mismatched teeth that jut up from bleeding gums. As they circle in this burning, choking sphere that only burns and chokes one of them, the Daemon gives a demonic roar. The sound is exultant and instinctive, it is unfiltered emotion, and it reeks more of triumph than rage.
Yang's mouth is still open when the spear gifted to her by the Star-Child, hurled from the Dragon's left hand, strikes. It shatters most of Daemon's teeth, severs her tongue at the throat-root, and punches through the back of her head. With the cervical segments of her spine reduced to ectoplasmic chunks, Yang falls boneless and stunned from the sky.
The Dragon twists in the smoke and follows her counterpart down.
Yang hits the ground with a cratering force at the heart of the two warring Legions. Her impact kills almost a hundred warriors on both sides, but this is another concern outside the shreds of her sentience. The surviving World Eaters cheer her through the dust, they bay at her like loyal hounds, but she knows nothing outside her own fury.
She claws at the spear, she roars around its impaling length; in these helpless seconds she's beast-stupid in sound and action, thrashing in the dirt. The lance comes free, slick with ichor pretending to be blood, gobbets of Daemonic flesh sizzling on its silver surface. Already, the Daemon is reforming, reknitting, sustained by whatever metaphysical processes fuel her existence. The Queen of the Red Sands throws the weapon away in time to meet its wielder. The Dragon descends with a silence that stinks of false righteousness, as though she were a creature too enlightened to feel rage.
The twins collide in the crater they made. Around them, the battle for the Mansion rages. They are coming, the World Eaters, Life Takers and the Blood Letters. Loyalist Yang senses them draw near, hears their howling; Yang sees this awareness dawn in her counterpart's eyes. Loyalist Yang swings and swings and swings as the snarls of Yang's mouth and Daemonic gauntlets grow louder. It isn't enough. The Dragon launches away, a crack of her wings carrying her upward.
The Queen of the Red Sands knows she can't catch her counterpart in the sky. She scrambles for the fallen spear, draws it back, and this time, there is no chase. This time, Yang is ready.
She throws the spear, still slathered in the ichor from when she tore it out of her own throat. The second she casts it, it rips through the air with a concussive drumbeat, breaking the sound barrier.
The Dragon rolls aside with the grace of the sky-born, dodging this streak of bladed intent. No, Yang sees; not dodging. Faster than the human eye can follow, the Dragon has caught her spear as it passed, rolled with the momentum, and now she casts it back to the ground with a cry of effort.
Yang will catch it, this twig of a thing, and–
She clutches nothing but air and the force of a meteor hits her in the chest, throwing her down, pinning her to the warp-stained ground. For several unreal seconds, the Queen of the Red Sands is impaled in place, speared through the chest. There is no pain, only humiliation.
She frees herself in time to see Loyalist Yang ascending. Leaving her behind. Her wounds close, but even slower than before. The Nails bite harder, despising her weakness.
Yang turns her back on her counterpart, seeking the lesser Sun Dragons in Legion Yellows and lilac. She wades through them, ending them, sending their bodies flying back, with heaving swings of her soul-thirsty Gauntlets.
If she cannot catch the Dragon, then she'll lure the Dragon back to her. She learned this from the Bane.
It takes no time at all. Yang has scarcely begun to shed blood before she hears the descending beat of draconic wings. The Queen of the Red Sands wipes the writhing bodies of dying Sun Dragons from where they're spitted upon her hands, and turns to meet her counterpart once more. Bolt-shells impact her. Chainswords carve into the un-meat of her legs. She ignores this, the pitiful defiance of her sons with their bolters and chainswords. She will kill them and devour them and offer up their skulls to the Skull Throne, yes, but now, first, the Dragon must die.
The counterparts go at one another, fist to fist. They are a blur to the mortals around them, so swift are the clashes of their punches that their gauntlets sing a single extended note, a lasting ring without crescendo or diminuendo. It is beautiful, that ululating chime. A masterpiece of broken physics.
But only one of them is immortal. Loyalist Yang, failed by mortal muscle, weakened by the war, begins to slow. Her jabs become deflections; her hooks shift to parries. She gives ground, at first by inches, then with greater steps. Through eyes tense with effort, she sees that she's being driven back towards the violated main gate of the Mansion.
The Queen of the Red Sands sees it dawn on the Dragons face, how the longer they fight, the weaker only one of them becomes. In the searing thresh that passes for Yang's mind, she knows it will come, any moment now, when desperation will force her counterpart's hand.
Gauntlets clash. They clash. They clash and clash and clash and then...
Yang lets the silver Gauntlet run through her, taking it inside her Daemonic corpus as a sacrifice. She uses the blow, feeding off the pain and craving the damage because it lets her get closer, and empowers her semblance. Ooze bubbles through the cage of her teeth, the ectoplasm that animates her running from her body in a flow of lifeblood, but no matter, it's worth it. A taloned hand snaps around the Dragon's throat. The other thrusts forward.
Loyalist Yang jerks as the clawed gauntlet slides, with miserable slowness, into her guts. Her scarred features darken with pain, and the Queen of the Red Sands feeds on that sight, feeds on the Dragon's baring of teeth, feeds on the stink of Loyalist Yang's rich, running blood. The sensation is narcotic, intoxicatingly pure. Even the God of Blood, in who nearby duels with the anathema, bathes with pleasure at the shedding of this being's blood.
Yang's grip tightens on the Dragon's throat. She thrusts her fist deeper, and deeper, growling at the fresh flow of blood that bursts from her counterpart's mouth. Loyalist Yang's mouth works, but at first no words come forth. All she manages to breathe out is her own name.
"Yang..."
It is a struggle for Yang to speak, but a lifetime of bitterness is dredged with the agony in her counterpart's lilac eyes. She sinks her fist deeper into the Dragon's body, hilting it in her counterpart's guts, and draws her in until they're face to face. She's close enough to smell the blood on her counterpart's breath. She's close enough for it to spatter against her face.
"Yang."
No sound in life has ever been sweeter than her flawed, beloved, exemplar self hissing her name in strangulation. Yang's jaws are poorly shaped for human speech, but the Queen of the Red Sands forces the words from her maw.
"Hark, for the dying Dragon sings."
Loyalist Yang reaches for her with weak and clawless hands. It's pathetic. The performance of a weakling. The Queen of the Red Sands doesn't need to breathe; she cares nothing if her counterpart's hands find their way around her throat.
But the sweetness is fading. The adrenal rush drains away. Is this truly how the Dragon dies? Is this all the fight Loyalist Yang has left in her celebrated form?
'Yang!!'
Khorne. The Blood God, the coward. The Queen of the Red Sands hears the voice break through her ecstatic haze, and senses Khorne has been seeking to reach her blood-soaked mind for some time. There is derision in the Blood God's presence, but above all, there is fear.
'Release her! Release her, she is-'
Loyalist Yang reaching hands close on a fistful of the cranial cables that crown Yang's head. The Dragon grips the technological dreadlocks that form the external regulators of the Butcher's Nails, and the beast that Yang has become realizes, too late, much too late-the Dragon has played the same gambit, risking a gauntlet, welcoming it, to get close.
'Kill her, before-'
The words cease to exist, replaced by pain. Real pain, a thing she thought she was incapable of experiencing, now stunning in its unfamiliar savagery.
The Queen of the Red Sands gives a roar loud enough that the Mansion's void shields shimmer with a mirage's ripple. She tears her fist from her counterpart's body, grappling, hurling, but the Dragon remains. White and yellow wings batter at the Daemon's face and defeat the raking of her claws. She abandons her own gauntlet to scratch and scrape at the Dragon. She tears away shards of bright Yellow armor. Wings bleed. Tears rain. And yet never once does Loyalist Yang make a sound.
'Then do it! PROVE IT TO ME! That you are Yang Xiao-Long, Loyal Primarch to the Emperor of Mankind! Set yourself free!'
The words of the Master of Mankind rang throughout Loyalist Yang's mind, she understood now.
Yang cries out, a cry flavored by something other than rage for the first time since her enslavement. Agony lightning-bolts through her head, fire and ice, ice and fire, a sensation she no longer has the mind to understand but that will destroy her whether she understands it or not. She launches upward, beating her ungainly wings, striving for the sky. Turning and tumbling, seeking to dislodge the straining Dragon.
On the battlefield below, the Legions continue their duels in the rain of their Primarchs blood. "I remember, I remember now, I am Yang Xiao-Long" feels her skull creaking, stretching; then a crack, a crack that paints the back of her eyes with acid; it's the cracking of a slowly breaking window, the crack of a skull under a tank's treads.
She hears her counterpart now: Loyalist Yang's ragged hisses of breath, coming in time to the scrape of her gauntlet against the pain engine's mechanical tendrils. Their eyes meet, and there is no mercy in the Dragon's pale gaze. Loyalist Yang is lost to the passions she has always resisted. The Queen of the Red Sands sees it in the pinpricks of her self's own pupils, in the ivory grind of her counterpart's teeth. The Dragon has lost herself to blood-need, and veins show starkly blue on her cheeks. This is wrath. This is the true Wrath of the Dragon unleashed.
It is an anger so absolute, that Yang feels the bite of another forgotten emotion: jealousy. What she sees in the Dragon's eyes is no bitter fury at a life of mistreatment, or rage goaded by the will of a God that only rewards slaughter. It feeds the God of Blood, as all bloodshed does, but it is not born of him.
It is the Dragon's own fury, in worship of nothing but justice and freedom. How beautiful that is. How naive. How pure. Just like someone else she remembers, a once smaller, more honest soul.
This is the Daemon's last cohesive thought. Fuelled by animal panic as much as sentient rage, Yang's frantic clawing does nothing to throw herself clear. The two fall together, the Daemon's strength lost to convulsive thrashing, the Dragon's ripped and bloodstained wings unable to keep them both aloft.
The dreadlock-cables are fastened deep in the meat of the monster's mind. They are not attached to the brain, they are part of it, tendrilling their way through the pain engine that replaced and so poorly simulated entire sections of the Twelfth Primarch's cerebellum, thalamus and hypothalamus. The Butcher's Nails are woven throughout her brainstem, hammered in to bind them to the spinal column and central nervous system. It is a process almost admirable in its barbaric effectiveness, one reproduced with malignant perfection in her exaltation from a mortal to an immortal.
From behind the veil, Yang hears laughter. A God, laughing at her, because it cares not from whence the blood flows. Only that it does. The death of the Queen of the Red Sands is as pleasing to this divinity as the death of any other champion.
Warp-fire flares from the cracks in the beast's deforming skull. The cracks become crunches, each one a conflagration that sweeps from the filaments behind Yang's eyes to the spikes of her spine. There is the feeling of violation, a deep and slick wrongness as something is taken from her, pulled from the root of her mind.
She screams then, and she does something she has never done, in neither her mortal nor immortal lives. Her roar of pained rage is coloured by a sound so shameful she will spend the rest of eternity refusing to believe it happened. The sound is a word, and the word is a plea.
She begs.
"No," the beast grunts to her counterpart.
"This ends here. We must be Better." Utters back Loyalist Yang.
This moment will never enter the legends of either Legion. The Primarchs are so high above the battlefield, and the few sons able to watch their mother are too far away to know what passes between them. Only Loyalist Yang hears her own last word, and it is an intimacy she will take to her grave.
The ground approaches with disorientating speed. It's now or never.
As they free fall together, the Dragon gives a roar of might as the final wrenching pull on the serpents of barbarian metal. The Daemon's head bursts. It's a detonation, a release of internal pressure like pus from a squeezed cyst: the lion's share of Yang's brain comes free in a spray of fire and acid blood. The Daemon's wings beat once more, just a shiver, a thing of reflex.
(A/N: Had to include this artwork cuz hot damn this picture goes mega hard)
Her claws slacken. And all struggles cease.
Dallas who witnessed Yang come down from the sky with the cables in her hand, mentally cheered.
'Yes! Hahaha! You did babe, you broke free! I'm so proud of you.'
His thought process was knocked out when a blow from World-Breaker hit him directly in the head. Dallas growled and focused back on his opponent.
The God-Emperor goes for an overhead strike but Rias weaves under it and does a two handed scoop slam, putting her arm on his neck and one of his groin, and slams him into the ground.
Dallas rears his right arm and throws Destroyer but Rias catches the hammer head in her claws and squeezes. With that one squeeze the hammer head of Destroyer crumbles like a crouton. Dallas' eyes widened with horror before locking in and using the moment to charge at Rias.
Dallas conducts a flawless spinning judo throw, slamming Rias onto her back before reaching down, following it with a one handed submission attempt with right hand on Rias' throat and his left keeping Rias' right hand away.
But Rias breaks free, summoning the 'Spear of Tzeetch' and impaling the spear into Dallas' left pauldron. Rias summons another spear and slams the butt of it into the ground causing the impaled spear to explode and destroying his left pauldron leaving the synthetic muscle fibers of the power armor layer exposed.
Rias rears back another spear and pierces deep into Dallas' abdomen before shoving him back and detonating that spear.
Dallas with no weapon, summons another, his Chainsword 'Storm's Teeth' they clash. The Chainsword screams as the teeth eat at the spear's shaft. Rias beats him in the duel of strength and impales him several more times in the abdomen. By now the plackart of his armor has completely been demolished and now his abdomen lies unarmored, exposed. Rias takes full advantage of it, impaling him over and over and over again. Dallas cried in pain as he doubled over trying to protect his stomach.
Rias shoots in with a smooth left horizontal elbow to the face knocking him up straight before grabbing him and throwing him toward the Mansion causing him to crash into the foyer roof. Dallas dislodges himself and launches himself with the full force of the Master of Man, and the following clash produces a burst of energy so powerful that the ground around the completely gets destroyed leaving a massive crater that is .7 miles(1.1km) wide and 560 feet(170m) deep, and damaging half of the Supreme Mansion.
Both fighters get up and square up, Dallas lands a nice pommel strike to Rias' face and then both combatants rest position.
Both of them swing, Stalemate.
Swing again, Stalemate.
Swing again, Stalemate.
Swing again, Stalemate.
They swing again but Storm's Teeth was never meant to handle such heavy repeated blows like that, as such the Chainsword completely destroys itself, the promethium engine sputters before dying, and the chain's teeth go flying in all directions.